Blog Archives

A little over 24 hours after its community team scored the worst received comment in Reddit history, EA and DICE have responded to the criticism of the cash-grabbing practices in Star Wars: Battlefront II by announcing changes to the pricing of the unlockable hero characters in the game.

Gamers have been vocally opposed to the industry’s move to introduce more microtransactions and loot boxes into games, especially when they can upset the balance of a competitive multiplayer experience.

This battle between the gamers opposed to constant and unbalanced microtransactions and publishers who are putting millions in their pockets through said microtransactions has come to a head in the run up to Star Wars: Battlefront II. EA’s defense of their progression through loot box acquisitions and the advantage of paying to progress was so bad that it is the most disliked comment in the history of Reddit.

Just over twelve months ago, we had a story about unionized video game voice actors under the Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) discussing strike action against video game publishers over what they claimed was inadequate compensation and unsafe working conditions. Now, SAG-AFTRA has announced that they are on strike against nearly a dozen game developers and publishers which might slow production on upcoming games.

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The Nintendo NX name is no more as Nintendo officially unveiled its next console, the hybrid Nintendo Switch.

As had been rumoured for months, the Switch is a hybrid portable and home console that will allow you to play the same games at home and on the go with a near seamless switch from the Switch dock to portable ready.

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The longest active StarCraft competition has come to an end. KeSPA has announced that the StarCraft ProLeague, a Korean team-based league that started in 2003 with Brood War and ran for fourteen years, would discontinue operations effective immediately. This announcement was made simultaneous with the announcement that five top Korean SC2 teams would also disband effective immediately.

Just a few weeks after filing suit against 100 anonymous Steam users for ongoing harassment through the digital games store and client, the lawsuit has been terminated by Digital Homicide without prejudice. In an interview following the suit’s dismissal, one-half of Digital Homicide, James Romine, said that the company was “destroyed.”

Two-man indie developer Digital Homicide has made more news and gained more notoriety from their response to criticism than from their games themselves. Despite having nearly two dozen games on Steam, they are perhaps best known for representing themselves in a lawsuit against critic Jim Sterling for $15 million in damages related to his reviews and first impressions videos of their games.

Now, Digital Homicide is taking their legal game to the next level. The developer is now in the early stages of filing lawsuits against 100 Steam users for $18 million and is considering taking legal action against Valve itself.

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We all knew what was coming at yesterday’s PlayStation Meeting. Try as they might to keep it quiet, the worst kept secret at Sony Computer Entertainment was officially revealed to the world. Sony has officially announced the PlayStation 4 Slim and the PlayStation 4 Pro, which you might formerly know as the PS4 Neo.

Very quietly, EA has amended the terms of its EA / Origin Access programs on Xbox One and PC to make a major exclusion. EA has explicitly omitted Titanfall 2 from the EA / Origin Access program which means that the game won’t be available to Access subscribers prior to the game’s release in October.

ZeniMax’s lawsuit against Oculus VR took a turn for the nastier last week. An updated filing by ZeniMax claims that the development of the Oculus Rift VR headset is a result of former id Software employee and current Oculus CTO John Carmack stealing thousands of documents and using them in developing the Rift. Their suit also now alleges that Oculus founder Palmer Luckey isn’t capable of developing VR technology himself.